


small offerings

by TheQueenInTheNorth



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Past Brainwashing, Pre-Relationship, mention of Grant Ward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:34:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23188582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQueenInTheNorth/pseuds/TheQueenInTheNorth
Summary: With no memories of her past, Kara tries to rebuild her sense of self. Raina helps more than she knows.
Relationships: Kara Lynn Palamas/Raina
Comments: 6
Kudos: 7





	small offerings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [101places](https://archiveofourown.org/users/101places/gifts).



Kara sat and drank her coffee and wondered if she had always hated the taste of it.

There was no saying what else had been erased and rewritten when her memories had been taken. There was no saying whether she’d always drank coffee and whether she’d ever only done it to curb the bone-deep exhaustion – though that might be new, for all she knew. She might not always have felt so ready to drop, every second of the day.

There was little point in dwelling on whether she had always taken her coffee almost black, with just a splash of milk, or if it was just because that was how Grant took his and she was too tired to argue when he set the cup down in front of her.

He hadn’t asked if she wanted coffee. He hadn’t asked how she took it. He never asked her anything, really.

Maybe that should be a relief. She already asked herself questions day in and day out. She never had an answer for any of them.

Instead, his indifference weighed down on her even more, right along with her own ignorance about her own life.

She went through the motions because the motions were all she had left, Grant was all she had left.

Until he was on a mission - without taking her, without even telling her he was leaving - and she stood in the kitchen at the crack of dawn and could not move, could barely even breathe.

“Morning,”someone said behind her.

She couldn’t make herself react.

Raina pushed past her, her shoulder brushing Kara’s arm.

“You’re not a morning person, are you?”Raina asked, cocking an eyebrow.

Kara stared at her blankly.“I don’t know.”

Waking up was hard. It was just as hard when she tried to sleep in.

Raina looked at her a moment longer, that calculating glint in her eyes she thought she hid so well, the one Kara always saw anyway, and something a little softer, something Kara had not seen in as long - as short - as she could remember.

“Grab me the tea,”Raina said as she put on the kettle.“Someone keeps moving it to the top cabinet.”

Barely taller than Raina, Kara could only just reach that shelf herself but she pulled down the tea and was rewarded with a tiny hint of a smile.

“Do you want a cup, too?”Raina asked.

Kara nodded, and put the flutter in her chest aside for later examination.

* * *

The mystery of her own past was still very much unsolved. It occupied her mind considerably less now that she’d found herself a new mystery to solve: Raina.

Raina who always knew the right things to say. Raina who sometimes said the wrong things anyway, and only smirked in the face of repercussions. Raina who made her place among them so easily you could forget she did not belong any more than Kara did.

Raina who asked questions - questions that Kara more often than not actually had answers for.

They weren’t questions about who she used to be, they weren’t even necessarily questions about the person she was now, but they were small choices in a sea of mindless obedience. She held them close to her heart as she found herself more and more with every sliver of autonomy Raina so casually offered to her.

Kara wanted to ask her if she knew what she was doing but that was a far too intense question to start off with. There were smaller ones, less meaningful ones, and she had a hundred prepared, waiting on the tip of her tongue.

It still took Kara weeks of turning everything over in her mind until she worked up the courage to ask a question of her own.

They were in the kitchen again. They were alone again. Raina’s mask had slipped that fraction it did in those moments, steaming mugs of tea clutched in their hands, the world quiet around them.

“Are you alright?”Kara asked. Not one of the questions she’d had prepared. Her heart thudded against her ribs and her palms grew clammy against the heat of her mug but she did not try to take the words back.

The mask was back so fast she almost missed the hint of panic flashing across Raina’s face.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”she said and her smile wasn’t shaky, though it was about as real as Kara’s allegiance to Hydra.

Kara shrugged and smiled. Her smile was shaky, small, ready to slip away before it had properly found its way onto her lips, but it was real.

“I’m not,”she confessed.“I thought you might not be, either. It’s not like we want to be here.”

Raina recoiled as if she’d been slapped. The spoon in her mug was clattering against the rim, giving away the invisible tremors in her hands.

“Don’t say that,”she hissed, eyes darting around the room. She sat up straight and painted that faux indifference back onto her face. She chuckled, a lovely, light, entirely hollow sound.“Why would you even say that?”

“Because it’s true,”Kara said.

She knew she sounded like a trap. Hydra had a penchant for setting them, for everyone, at any moment. Maybe Raina and her questions had been a trap all along.

The thought hurt. More than it hurt when Grant once again set a thrice damned cup of coffee down and didn’t notice when she didn’t even take a sip.

“It’s true for me, anyway,”Kara amended.

Raina closed her eyes and drew in a shuddering breath. She leaned closer, her voice barely even a whisper as she asked,“So what do we do now?”

It was a question and an answer.

“I’m not sure yet,”Kara said.

The laugh that bubbled from Raina’s lips was very almost hysterical and yet Kara could not help but join in.

The burned side of her face strained with the unfamiliar stretch of her laughter. She shouldn’t have gone months without encountering that issue.

Raina stopped laughing before Kara did, sliding out of her chair and around the table, worrying a handkerchief between usually so steady fingers.“May I?”

Kara nodded.

With Raina carefully wiping the blood from the tears in her strained, split skin, she could not say she minded the dull pain very much. With Raina’s fingers lingering, to stroke her cheek, to tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear, she was glad it had happened now.

* * *

“Are you ready?”Raina asked.

It had been a few weeks in the making. There was a pair of sunglasses perched atop Raina’s hair, one of her many flower dresses swinging around her legs.

Kara smoothed out her own flower dress of imaginary wrinkles. There was a pair of gun holsters strapped to her thighs under it.

“Ready,”she confirmed.

They were supposed to be collecting intel but they’d already gotten all they needed. Their reports were prewritten, enough going to high places to keep their disappearance hidden for long enough to get out of the country, enough going to lower ranks to breed discord and make finding them the least of anyone’s worries.

Raina’s fingers brushed hers as they walked and that felt like a question, somehow. Kara answered it by taking her hand.

Her hand was warm and soft, her grip tight. An anchor to hold her steady in all the things she still didn’t know, and would never know.

They were still holding hands on the ferry that would get them to one of Raina’s contacts from her days of petty crime. She dropped her head against Kara’s shoulder as if they’d sat like this a thousand times before.“Are you alright?”

“I will be,”Kara said.

And for the first time in as long as she could remember, she was completely certain of her words.

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the Roaring 20s Rarepair exchange. Thanks for reading!


End file.
